Rocky Mountain High!

And the Colorado Rocky Mountain high . . . 

I've seen it raining karma in the sky.

The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that, because Trump instigated the insurrection against the certification of the 2020 presidential election in Congress, he cannot appear on the ballot for President in the primary election in the Centennial State in 2024.  Because Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution says so:

"No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability." 

The Republicans are short by about seventy votes in the House and there's no way in hell that they can get 67 votes in the Senate.

Oh yeah, the U.S. Supreme Court has to weigh in and will get the final say.  Well, all originalists on the highest court in the land . . . if you believe that original intent of the framers rules the day, you have to rule against Trump!

And have a good time doing it. 😂

Oitavo de Janeiro

I assume that is going to be the new catchphrase that will be bandied about in Brazil to stand for insurrectionism.

Because it was on January 8 - what "Oitavo de Janeiro" means in Portuguese - that Brazilian right-wingers supporting former President Jair Bolsonaro and believing the election was stolen from him stormed the presidential palace, Supreme Court, and headquarters of Congress in Brasília and vandalized the buildings in an effort to prevent legitimately elected President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from moving ahead with his efforts to tear out Tropical Trumpism.

Under any other circumstances, I would have been cheering on the vandalization of the buildings because, well, they're ugly Modernist mausoleums.  I mean . . . wouldn't you want to vandalize buildings that looked like this? 

This is the National Congress.  

But the vandals were there not to express architectural criticism but to show bad faith in the rule of law and the idea of one person,one vote that Lula believes in and Bolsonaro had tried to destroy.  

But you have to admit . . .

With a presidential palace like this, it's easy to see why Lula, who was away at the time, would be in danger.  All that glass.  As for Bolsonaro, as a president who lived in a glass house, he shouldn't have thrown stones.  

Last I heard abut Bolsonaro, he was doing what other Latin American tyrants known for going into exile do - checking in at the Fontainebleau Hotel (or, more likely, Mar-a-Lago) and checking out Florida real estate.    

The January 6 Hearings - Part One

I think it's fair to say that the House January 6 select committee's televised hearings stormed out of the gate the other night. 

The committee showed new footage of the insurrection from that day, putting it into proper context and outlining a basic narrative that subsequent hearings will follow.  In addition, ranking Republican Vice Chair Liz Cheney of Wyoming laid out a blunt, outlined seven-point plan Trump had to keep the Presidency despite his loss to Joe Biden.  It reads as follows:

• President Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information to the American public claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him.
• President Trump corruptly planned to replace the Acting Attorney General, so that the Department of Justice would support his fake election claims.
• President Trump corruptly pressured Vice President Pence to refuse to count certified electoral votes in violation of the US Constitution and the law.
• President Trump corruptly pressured state election officials, and state legislators, to change election results.
• President Trump’s legal team and other Trump associates instructed Republicans in multiple states to create false electoral slates and transmit those slates to Congress and the National Archives.
• President Trump summoned and assembled a violent mob in Washington and directed them to march on the US Capitol.
• As the violence was underway, President Trump ignored multiple pleas for assistance and failed to take immediate action to stop the violence and instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol.

The facts as Cheney and Democratic Chair Bennie Thompson of Mississippi presented them certainly ft this narrative like a velvet glove.  And then came the iron fists: Former Attorney General William Barr insists that Trump lost the election fair and square, and Ivanka Trump, Donald's pseudo-attractive daughter, agrees with Barr!

Fleshing all of this out was testimony from Capitol Policewoman Caroline Edwards, who recalled the violence at the insurrection and explained how she was pushed back with brute force and blacked out momentarily before resuming her efforts to hold back the mob.  Even more devastating was the testimony from British documentary filmmaker Nick Quested, who was making a film about the polarization of American politics and filming leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers involved plotting the takeover of the Capitol - on the night of January 5! - thus belying the idea that this "demonstration" was "spontaneous." 

The best is yet to come.  Over the course of more televised hearings this month, the January 6 committee will offer greater details of how that day played out - the better to place the blame for the insurrection squarely on Trump.  Republicans - and Trump - are already calling this a partisan witch hunt, insisting that it's better to investigate the root causes of January 6 by looking into electoral irregularities involving vote-by-mail practices as a result of the pandemic - irregularities  that didn't exist - and questions into Speaker Pelosi's role in beefing up security for the electoral vote count.  Liz Cheney, for one, isn't having any of that.  As she said the other night at the first hearing, when she said her fellow Republicans were "defending the indefensible":

"There will come a day when Donald Trump will be gone. But your dishonor will remain."

Will any of this matter? We'll see.

Taking Garland Down

It's been a year since the January 6 insurrection, and with an ongoing Justice Department investigation of what happened that day,  Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke yesterday in what was billed as a major speech.   Garland declared that the investigation is being pursued vigorously and that all participants in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, from the actual attackers to those who planned the attack, will face justice.  

"The actions we have taken thus far will not be our last," Garland said in his speech. "The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law - whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy.  We will follow the facts wherever they lead."

In other words, nothing new to bother with.

Merrick Garland is a man of integrity, but his slow, lethargic process and his efforts to appear nonpolitical in this case suggest that President Biden misjudged his man when he chose the former would-be Supreme Court justice to be the nation's chief law enforcement officer.  His diligence has to be speeded up if he wants to get results.  Also, his investigation seems focused more on the attack on the Capitol than on the efforts to overturn the election before the attack.  It's easy to see why the PBS NewsHour's nightly news report failed to even mention the speech last night.

I can't believe how many people still think the election was stolen and how many Republicans are downplaying the investigation and getting away with rigging the system for 2024 and beyond.  Have Republicans lost their minds? COVID is surging and our democracy is in a tailspin, and everything seems to be getting worse.  Now I'm really angry . . ..        

See You In September

We haven't heard that much from the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, mainly because the U.S. House of Representatives is in recess, but committee members are preparing to go full tilt boogie when the committee reconvenes after Labor Day.

Select committee chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) has already vowed to issue subpoenas to all of the relevant parties in this investigation, and the one public hearing the committee has so far featured powerful testimony from Capitol police officers, one of whom is an immigrant, on the ugliness and the bigotry they faced from the insurrectionists.   Don't confuse the quiet from the committee for crickets.  They'll be back in September, and they're going to be gearing up to get to the bottom of what happened. 

The Ghost of Hillary Clinton Still Lingers

New details about how Donald Trump tried to subvert the constitutional process and remain in power despite losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, especially the events of January 6, are chilling, especially when you realize the comparisons to Adolf Hitler making himself dictator of Germany after suspending basic liberties in the wake of the 1933 Reichstag fire or to Benito Mussolini marching his black-shirts on Rome to force King Victor Emmanuel III to name him premier in 1922.   The cause for all this can all be boiled down to one simple reason - a political party whose members were blindly devoted to one person and falling in line to give that person the party's presidential nomination and shunning and dismantling opposition to the nominee from the start.

And no, I'm not talking about the Republican Party's embrace of Donald Trump.  I'm talking about the Democratic Party's embrace of Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The Democrats developed a personality cult around Hillary Clinton, idolizing her so much that they needed only to refer to her be her first name.  It's not that they were hell-bent on making a woman President of the United States. It's that they were hell-bent on making this woman President of the United States.  Nobody seriously considered the possibility that she was beatable against the eventual 2016 Republican nominee - even if that nominee were to be Donald J. Trump.  They blindly accepted her and worshipped her as a feminist icon who would provide a powerful symbol for women and girls as President without asking if maybe, oh, I don't know, Elizabeth Warren might have been a better choice for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.  The Democratic National Committee protected her from most challengers to her bid - like Joe Biden - for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, and those who did challenge her were ridiculed and punished for running.  Bernie Sanders wasn't, because he's not a Democrat. But his supporters certainly were ridiculed and punished.  

I was among the ones who said that Hillary couldn't win the Presidency, and all I heard in response was, "La la la, first female President!" A typical response from cultists such as Hillbots.  So I was not entirely surprised when Trump won the 2016 election. But I must say that I was surprised how megalomaniacal he would become and how Hillary's defeat allowed him to assume a position of power and exploit that power for his own personal gain - to the extent that he would even invoke the Insurrection Act or drop a nuclear bomb to keep it.

Although Hillary conceded the 2016 election and did not contest the result, she didn't do herself any favors by whining about her loss to Trump during his four years in the White House.  She could have done something constructive to help combat his authoritarian rule, but instead she acted a lot like he does when he loses, so convinced is she of her own greatness.  She mainly wasted that intervening time bitching about Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, blaming them and others for her loss, while wallowing in self-absorption.  Dodging blame for an electoral loss isn't much different from denying such a loss.  As Kyle Smith of National Review wrote in January 2020, "Remember when Jimmy Carter published a whiny, self-serving book about his political downfall called 'What Happened'? Remember when Mike Dukakis pushed filmmakers to do a four-hour fan documentary about himself? Remember when George H.W. Bush mocked Bill Clinton at the Grammys? Yeah, me neither."

The 2016 election and the 2020 election had one thing in common - Trump insisted that both of them would prove to be rigged if he lost.  Had he lost in 2016, Trump, as a private citizen, would have had little leverage to sue to stop the certification of Hillary Clinton's election and would merely have challenged the results as a publicity stunt for his business ventures.  But as an incumbent with a lust for power, Trump took the idea of a rigged election seriously, convinced that he was so loved and idolized by his base - just like Hillary Clinton had been by hers - that there was no way he could have lost.  (And when he won in 2016, he was incensed that he didn't win the popular vote, blaming that vote shortfall on illegal immigrants voting illegally.) The bottom line is that Hillary's ego led to Trump, who, fueled by his own ego, then used the Presidency to attempt the establishment of a right-wing dictatorship and continues to poison the well with his control of a Republican Party that hopes to strike the final blow against democracy in America by 2024.

And we also got Trump's "leadership" to get us through a pandemic.

Soon after Biden was elected President, Hillary Clinton expressed interest in working for his administration.  But, considering how her wrongheaded quest for the Presidency worked out, it makes sense that we don't hear much from Hillary Clinton these days.   My only wonder is when her chief henchwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz will be made to answer for enabling the only candidate Trump could have defeated to get the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

There Was a Riot Goin' On

Like many people across America, I saw the House impeachment managers present video evidence at Donald Trump's Senate trial of how close congressional lawmakers - and then-Vice President Mike Pence came to being assassinated, as shown in the video still below, and the managers tied it perfectly to Trump's call for a "wild" time on January 6.  More is to come today.

Alas, you can count all of the Senate Republicans currently siding with Trump who can be persuaded to change their minds on one hand with fingers to spare.  And I'm being optismtic.  Trump is still going to be acquitted, and that means he's still likely to remain a free man unless the Justice Department finds reason to prosecute him.  And so it's easy to understand why Trump bootlicker Lindsey Graham has been holding Merrick Garland's appointment as President Biden's Attorney General.

But a federal investigation may be unnecessary, as there is now a criminal investigation focusing on Trump's meddling in the state of Georgia for that obscene phone call he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.  It looks like the case that puts Trump in the slammer will come not from the Empire State but the Empire State of the South.

Peachy.  

Brian's Song

U.S. Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick lived life to the fullest and loved his job as one of the officers protecting the headquarters of Congress.  Killed during the January 6 insurrection, he was memorialized in the Capitol rotunda when his ashes were brought to lie in honor there.  His remains have been interred in Arlington National Cemetery in recognition of not just his sacrifice at the Capitol but for his service in the Air National Guard.

Officer Sicknick's fate should fire up efforts to punish Donald Trump for inciting a riot against the legislative branch of the federal government, as his impeachment trial begins this coming Tuesday.  But Senate Republicans remain mostly noncommittal to the idea of conviction; an acquittal, now seen as inevitable, will squander Congress's last chance to ensure that Trump can't stand for the Presidency again in 2024.  But more importantly, it means that the Republicans will do nothing in standing up to the extremist, reactionary wing of their party, and the GOP could regain power in the 2022 midterms and the 2024 elections if the vote is close enough, whether Trump runs to get his old job back or not.  And thanks to redistricting and voter suppression, it just might.

Brian Sicknick's memory shouldn't be dishonored like this.  We learn almost every day new facts about how the insurrection came close to mass assassinations of elected officials.  Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D_NY), whatever you think of her politics, deserves sympathy for coming close to death on January 6 and having the relive her experience with sexual assault while the mob went about like the madmen they were to kill whoever was in their path. Ocasio-Cortez heard the cries of "Where is she? Where is she?" whiel in hiding and might very well have been convinced they were coming for her, so much has she become a bogeywoman for the Republican right.  The woman the mob was looking for was, more likely, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and that an institutionalist like Pelosi and a staunch progressive like AOC could inspire the same level of rage among these extremists is one of the most horrific ironies of the Trump base's extent of their hatred.

Yes, it makes no sense to acquit Trump, but we are told that this is inevitable.  News flash: So was a Hillary Clinton Presidency in 2016.  Nothing is really "inevitable." And if even if Trump doesn't get convicted in the Senate, he could still get convicted in a criminal court in New York State.  The state Attorney General's office there may very well see to that. 

Remove Donald Trump From Office. Now.

Donald Trump did this.

Donald Trump built up a base of rabid right-wing populists to sustain his lust for power and managed to fool enough people into believing that he was looking out for their interests when he was only looking out for his own.  He used that deception to enrich himself and his cronies - but mostly himself -  and give himself so much power through the office of the Presidency that he though the could serve as President for life and exact every last bit of power he could to make himself omnipotent.  He also lied to his supporters and convinced them that he had been rightfully re-elected against President-elect Joe Biden and, refusing to concede, urged them to "stand by" against the liberals, the minorities, the elites, and the so-called Deep State before exhorting them to march to the Capitol on the day of the congressional certification of the electoral vote for President and Vice President.  When they approached the Capitol, the inevitable happened.  

Trump specifically told his supporters to march on the Capitol to force his re-election.  His minions in Congress aided and abetted in planning to dispute the electoral votes of no fewer than six states.  He even tried to get Vice President Mike Pence to invalidate the vote, something Pence was constitutionally  unable to do and something he refused to do.  All indications are that Trump was enjoying the spectacle watching it on TV form the White House.  He has since condemned the violence, but without much if any sincerity, spewing lies about how he wanted and tried to bring order to the chaos by calling out the National Guard (Pence and the Defense Department actually did that).  All Trump did was throw his own supporters under the bus.  With the electoral vote having been certified for Joe Biden, Trump now admits he will no longer be President after noon on January 20.  But here's the problem - he will still be President before then.

In the eleven days left in his "Presidency," Trump, who remains deluded by his own lies, has control over the nuclear codes and has the ability to do a lot of damage even without launching a nuclear missile to some place like Iran.  Five people already died at the Capitol this past week because of him.  He is dangerous.  He must be removed immediately and Mike Pence should be President in the waning days of the current presidential term.  If the Vice President himself won't confer with what's left of the Cabinet (Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Transportation, has resigned, as has Education Secretary Betsy DeVos) and invoke Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, then Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer should do what they promised (or threatened) to do - impeach and convict Trump as quickly as possible.  I still doubt that Trump will leave the White House on his own despite his mealy-mouthed promise to do so this past Thursday, and so he must be removed by any legal means necessary.  The sooner the better.  America has had numerous figures from all walks of life, from politics to popular culture, that have brought disgrace upon this country because they have negatively embodied America in the eyes of the world, and I've written about a few of them here, but none of them have brought the magnitude of disgrace upon this country that Donald John Trump has.

It's time for him to go.   

Insurrection

There are no words for what happened at the U.S Capitol yesterday.

Only a picture that's worth a thousand words.

This sums up how screwed up America is.  

And it all started when a boorish real estate developer decided to run for President and got the media to cover his every move because he was so goddamned entertaining. 

Back later . . .